In Which My Husband Sets My Oven Mitts On Fire, and I Have to Make New Ones, and Then He LAUGHS at Me! A Tutorial

Okay, I didn't HAVE to make new ones.  Sensible people just go to the store and BUY oven mitts.  I checked Williams Sonoma and Sur la Table, though, and neither of them had any cute, kitschy oven mitts that I could get excited about.  And yes, I DO need to feel excited about oven mitts in order to buy them.

Laughing So Hard, His Face is as Red as the Oven Mitts

Apparently my oven mitts are hysterically funny, just because the thumbs are a bit too small for Bernie's giant hands.  This is because I took too wide of a seam allowance, and I COULD easily fix them by ripping out the seams and resewing them, but I don't particularly feel like it now that my efforts have been ridiculed.  They fit Anders' hands perfectly; maybe I should teach HIM to cook for us?

My old oven mitts were from Williams Sonoma, purchased way back when they were featuring the color "saffron" and they were selling pot holders, Le Creuset cookware, aprons, towels, and everything else in that color, which complements my kitchen nicely.  What happened to my oven mitts is that Bernie was cooking something where you brown meat on the stove, then put the pan in the oven to sear the meat, and then it comes back to the stove for the remainder of cooking -- with a searing hot metal handle that one tends to forget is hot.  So he stuck an oven mitt on the handle of the skillet, and then when he turned up the burner flame the oven mitt ignited.  And we've had these oven mitts for a LONG time anways, at least 10 years, so it's time for them to go.

Sad Little Saffron Oven Mitts, Soon to be Retired

I turned the damaged oven mitts inside out to inspect them, and discovered that they were 100% cotton (according to the care label), and consisted of an outer layer of cotton twill, a thin layer of cotton batting, and a layer of terry cloth, all quilted together.  

At the Seam Allowance, I Can See the Layers of the Old Oven Mitt

I decided to use the old pot holders as a pattern for my new ones.  

Inside Out Old Oven Mitt

Looking at the photo above, I can see why my oven mitts ended up too small at the top.  I cut my mitts out to match the raw edges of the old mitt and then sewed my mitt with a consistent seam allowance all the way around, but it looks like the Williams Sonoma elves trimmed the seam allowances at the fingertip and thumb curves to reduce bulk before turning them right side out.  So I COULD just rip out the seam and resew the pot holders with a narrower seam allowance and then they'd be fine, and maybe I will do that...  Later.  Someday.  When I get around to it.  (Not going to happen).  

And now, for the tutorial, in case you feel the urge to make your very own custom oven mitts!

My Fabrics After Prewashing

So I chose a Waverly cotton home dec print remnant from the clearance section at Jo-Ann's, cotton batting scraps, a lime green cotton terry cloth, and I added a layer of Insul-Brite between the cotton batting and the terry cloth, for added insulation.  I needed about 1/2 yard of each.  I also bought a package of extra wide double-fold bias tape and two spools of all-purpose polyester thread, one to match the paisley print and the other to matchin the binding.  Of course the Waverly home dec fabric was labeled Dry Clean Only, but I prewashed it along with the terry cloth anyway, in hot water so they would shrink.  Food gets on oven mitts, oven mitts need to get washed, and they need to shrink BEFORE I wash them.  Now, you can absolutely use quilting weight cotton for your oven mitts and pot holders, and if you do, you'll have a much better assortment of colors and prints to choose from.  I chose the home dec twill because I wanted a beefier, more rugged outer layer that would last longer, like the Williams Sonoma ones I had before.  

Cotton Twill Print, Thin Cotton Batting, Insul-Brite Batting, Terry Cloth

After laundering my fabrics, I layered my terry cloth, the Insul-Brite insulated batting, the thin cotton quilt batting, and the paisley print fabric right side up on top.  Four layers in this quilt sandwich, and there was no way I could get safety pins through all that thickness to secure the layers, so I spray basted them with 505 Spray and Fix temporary adhesive spray.  You do NOT want to skip this step -- even with a walking foot, the layers will scoot around under your presser foot and your terry cloth will end up all bunched and mangled if you don't glue baste all four layers together before quilting!  I know this because I was lazy, and tried it.  Fail!

505 Spray and Fix Temporary Fabric Adhesive

I suppose I could have quilted my oven mitt fabric on my longarm machine, but it was such a small quilt sandwich that I decided to just quilt it up on my domestic machine with my walking foot.  I really could have done any quilting design; the purpose is just to hold the layers together so they function as one fabric.  I decided the boring grid quilting would look best with my curvy paisley print, plus it was pretty fast to execute.

Walking Foot with Guide Bar for Evenly Spaced Lines

I quilted this on my Bernina 750 QE sewing machine with Walking Foot #50.  This foot has a little guide bar that I can attach for quilting evenly spaced rows without marking, so I just had to mark the first straight line with chalk and then spaced all of the others off of previous lines of quilting.

I'm using a size 90/14 Jeans needle for every step of this project, and that's important.  You can go up to a 90/14 Jeans needle or even a 100/16 or 110/18 Jeans needle, but please don't try to sew through all these layers with a dull 80/12 Universal needle that has been in your machine for a year.  Even if it's a brand new Universal needle, those are made with a slight ballpoint to the tip so they can be used for either wovens or for knits. For this project, you really need a strong needle with a SHARP point to penetrate this thick quilt sandwich made of home dec twill, terry, and two layers of batting, and still produce nice stitches -- and that's exactly what a Jeans needle is designed to do.

Schmetz 90/14 Jeans Needles

I quilted my potholder fabric with a 40 weight variegated King Tut cotton machine quilting thread that I had in my stash, using a coordinating solid 50/3 weight cotton thread in my bobbin.  

King Tut Variegated Machine Quilting Thread

Another important tip is that you want to reduce your presser foot pressure, if your machine allows you to do so (the Activa and 3 Series Bernina machines do NOT have adjustable presser foot pressure, but the rest of the models in the current lineup do, and so do my vintage Singer Featherweight machines).  I had to reduce the presser foot pressure drastically on my machine to get this ridiculously thick quilt sandwich to feed through the machine properly.  When I started trying to quilt with the presser foot pressure at the default setting of 50, the presser foot was smashing down so hard on the quilt sandwich that the feed dogs couldn't move the quilt sandwich through the machine properly, and I got itty bitty stitches no matter what stitch length I'd set the machine to sew.  I ended up lowering my presser foot pressure all the way down to 20 -- where the presser foot doesn't touch the bed of the machine in the down position without the quilt sandwich in between -- and that setting worked perfectly for this project.  I used a stitch length of 3.0 for quilting as well as for construction.

Quilting In Progress

As you can see, I quilted the first straight line down the lengthwise center of the quilt sandwich first.  Then I quilted all of the lines to the right of that line until I reached the edge, turned the sandwich around, and quilted all the lines from the center out to the opposite edge.

Diamond Cross Hatched Quilting Completed

Because I was working quickly and not aiming for perfection, I decided to quilt the crosshatching lines on a 45 degree angle rather than perpendicular to the vertical quilting lines.  If I had tried to quilt a grid of squares my imperfections would be more obvious, because some of my squares would be more rectangular.  A diamond grid camouflages those inconsistencies better.  After marking the first 45 degree angle line through the center of the quilt sandwich, I quilted out to the edges the same way I did with the vertical lines.

Quilting Completed!

...and voila!  Doesn't the diamond quilting look cool on the terry cloth side of the quilt sandwich?  Now my four disparate layers function as one thick, sturdy fabric, and I'm ready to cut out my oven mitts!

Terry Lining Side Up

Here's a view of the edge of the quilt sandwich, showing how ridiculously thick this is:

Edge View of Quilted Layers

See why I needed to reduce my presser foot pressure?  

Ready to Cut Out My Oven Mitts!

Since I was making two oven mitts, I needed to cut out two pairs of opposite mittens.  I folded my quilt sandwich in half, right sides together, and used my old oven mitts as templates to trace around and then cut out with my heavy duty Gingher tailor's shears.  My regular dressmaker's shears were not strong enough to cut through this easily.  Having gone to the trouble of quilting all of this together, I decided to cut out a small square potholder and a long, skinny pot handle cover from my scraps.  These would also be good for practicing the binding application later.

Mitts Cut Out

Ta da!

New Oven Mitt, Cut Out Right Sides Together

Notice the deep clip at the inside of the thumb.  The original oven mitts were clipped almost to the stitching line there.  Now, studying the old oven mitts again, I see that the bottom edges of the Williams Sonoma mitts were bound prior to stitching the mitt together along the sides, so the binding would not have to be wrapped around the huge log that is the seam allowance:

Binding Sewn First, Prior to Stitching the Side Seam

(The fancy Williams Sonoma elves must have sewn their binding continuously from one half of the mitt to the other, like chain piecing, to have that nice finished edge on the inside, but I didn't feel like exerting myself that degree, so I bound the edge of each half of my oven mitt separately).  So I sewed my binding on next:

Attaching the Extra Wide Double Fold Bias Binding

Packaged bias binding is folded so that one half of the bias tape is slightly narrower than the other.  You want the narrower edge on the TOP of your project.  I opened up that narrower edge of the binding and lined the raw binding edge up with the raw edge of my oven mitt.  I'm using presser foot 1D now, with Dual Feed engaged on my sewing machine.  If you don't have dual feed on your machine, you may want to use your walking foot again.  Presser foot pressure is still reduced to 20, and my stitch length is 3.0.  I'm stitching right along that first fold line on my bias binding.

Binding Wraps Around to the Back

Next, the binding gets wrapped around to the back side of the piece, and because the wider half of the binding is on the back side, the folded edge reaches just past the stitching line from sewing the binding down on the right side.   I used Wonder Clips to secure the binding prior to stitching, easing the curves and coaxing out any wrinkles as I went along.  I would not have been able to get regular sewing pins bent through these thick layers without distortion.  (If you decide to make your own binding rather than using the prepackaged kind, make sure you cut it on the bias.  If you cut it on the straight of grain, it won't be able to bend smoothly around the curved edges of your oven mitt!)

See the Little "Valley" of the Stitches Along the Edge?

As long as your binding covers that previous stitching line when you wrap it around to the back, you can be assured that it will be caught in the stitching when you sew along that same stitching line from the right side.  Like so:

Secure the Binding from the Wrong Side, Making Sure You Cover the Stitching Line

...Then Flip It Over to Stitch In the Ditch

How cute is that?!  Now I stitch in the ditch right next to the fold of my binding, and these stitches secure the back side of the binding pretty invisibly from the right side.  My needle is sewing into the red print fabric, but the needle is rubbing against the edge of the yellow binding.  I forgot to take a picture of this step, but I did switch to an open toed presser foot (#20D) that gave me better visibility of exactly where my needle was landing.  And here is what the finished binding looks like, front and back:

Right Side.  See Those Stitches Right Up Next to the Binding?

Wrong Side Secured

This is why I used yellow thread to sew down the binding instead of red thread that would have camouflaged with the print fabric.  The yellow thread is barely noticeable on the right side, so close to the yellow fabric, but the read thread would have looked really ugly on the backing side of the binding!  It's not perfect, but it's good enough for a utilitarian project like this one.  

Sewing the Seams: Now We Have EIGHT Layers!

...So I've Reduced Presser Foot Pressure All the Way Down to 10!

I sewed my pot handle sleeve together first, to experiment with machine settings.  Now there were EIGHT layers to deal with, and I was stuffing twice as much under my presser foot as I was during the quilting and binding steps.  So I reduced my presser foot pressure all the way down to 10 -- remember that 50 is the default setting for regular sewing!  I'm using Straight Stitch #1 on my Bernina, with the default tension of 5.0 which is perfect for my polyester all purpose thread.  I did increase my stitch length to 3.0 after snapping this picture.  (Oh, and the exclamation mark is outlined in yellow because I have told my machine that I have a straight stitch plate on my machine -- that prevents me from forgetting, selecting a zigzag stitch, and breaking my needle).

With these machine settings, it was really easy to sew around the edges of the pot handle sleeve and oven mitts (although I wish I'd taken a smaller seam allowance so they would have finished a little bigger!).  I clipped the thumb and finger curves (whoops -- I guess I CAN'T resew them with a narrower seam allowance, since I snipped all through there already).  I turned them inside out, and voila!

Finished Potholder, Oven Mitts, and Pot Handle Sleeve in the Morning Sun

They may be a little small for Chef Bernie's liking, but I think they are pretty darned cute.  Much more cheerful than anything Williams Sonoma is selling this season!

Small Potholder is Just the Right Size for the Tea Kettle Handle

The little square potholder that I cut from my scraps is just the right size for grabbing the whistling tea kettle when the water boils.  It will get used a lot, and it will look super cute on my counter top.

Chef Bernie, Cute But Dangerous!

As for my husband, the Arsonist Chef, he's forgiven.  I'm very lucky that he enjoys cooking for us -- that translates into more quilting time for me!

If you end up making your own pot holders or oven mitts from my tutorial, please send me a picture.  I'd love to see them!

I'm linking up with:

• ·       Finish It Up Friday at www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com
• ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com
• ·       Off the Wall Friday at Creations: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/
• ·       Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

Beginner Quilting Class Sample Finished and Delivered!

Good morning!  I hope you all enjoyed a restful, relaxing holiday weekend (Labor Day weekend here in the United States).  My teenage sons were both away on a Christian retreat all weekend, so my husband and I got a sneak peak at what that empty nest thing feels like.  

I finally finished up my beginner quilting class sample over the weekend:

Beginner Quilting Class Sample, 36" x 36"

Although it's a simple project, it was interesting how my thought process evolved throughout construction as I imagined teaching each step to someone who had never done it before, wanting to set those beginners up for success -- but with the time constraint of two full-day classes.

So we'll learn rotary cutting and piecing in the first class, and if they don't get their tops completely assembled by the end of the first class they can catch up for homework in between classes.  Then in the second class we'll learn to layer, baste, quilt, and bind.  It's a lot, I know.  What I decided to do for basting is to spray baste the quilt layers together with 505 (temporary spray adhesive that I had on hand because I use it to adhere stabilizer for machine embroidery projects) and to supplement that with sparser than usual pin basting, so students will be exposed to both methods, quilt layers will be secure through all the tugging and bunching and twisting under the machine, yet we won't eat up too much class time pinning.

Basted With 505 Adhesive Spray Plus 4 Safety Pins Per Block

The quilting design itself is pretty basic, all done with a walking foot.  

I wanted SO BADLY to add some free motion swirlies in the sashing and something fancy in the border, but free motion quilting is an entire journey of its own.  Way too much too much for beginners, especially since they will all have different sewing machines, they may not know how to lower their feed dogs, and they will not all have stitch regulators.  I don't want to discourage brand new quilters!

Walking Foot Quilting with Guide Bar Attached

Stitch in the ditch plus a few additional lines of quilting in each block (done with the guide bar attached to the walking foot), so no marking required.  Even so, I think I'll teach the binding FIRST on the second day, with a small layer cake sized sample quilt, so everyone's brain is fresh for the corner miters.  Then they can just focus on their quilting, knowing they have their binding samples to take home and remind them how to finish up.  Students can add additional lines of quilting if they feel like it and they have time.

When I bound the class sample with this cheerful cherry red stripe, I couldn't resist the challenge of pattern-matching the stripes at all of the diagonal seams.

Stripes Matched at Diagonal Binding Joins

Nice and invisible!  (I am not going to have beginners try to do that!).  I machine stitched the binding to the front of the quilt, briefly considered finishing it by machine, but ultimately decided to slipstitch the binding to the back of the quilt by hand.  

Binding Invisibly Hand Stitched to the Quilt Backing

Yes, it took several hours to do it that way, but that's the way I always do it, I like how it comes out, and I'm not interested in learning a new technique just so I can teach it.  I was able to stitch the binding down outside on the deck with Bernie, listening to the birds and classical music from the screen porch speakers.   Very relaxing!

Finished and Freshly Washed

I also decided to toss the finished quilt in the wash before handing it over to the shop, for a couple of reasons.  First, I wanted to remove the glue basting spray and fabric glue stick that I used when I pattern-matched my binding joins, as well as all of the starch I used throughout my construction process and any hand lotion, dust, or pet fur that may have accumulated on it.  Second, since this is a baby-sized quilt, I wanted it to be soft and snuggly, not stiff.  If we were really giving this to a baby, we would want to wash it to remove all the chemicals first.  Also, with very minimal quilting, it needed to go through the wash and shrink up slightly to get some texture and to accentuate the quilting lines.  And for beginners, when they wash their finished projects and they crinkle up like this, any wobbly quilt lines or tiny oopses will be obscured.  To me, a quilt is never REALLY finished until it comes out of the wash all soft and krinkled.

Now that the class sample is finished and delivered to the Bernina shop, I just need to compile my notes into a lesson plan while the details are still fresh in my mind, and write up a class description and supply list.  

Meanwhile, my longarm frame has been sitting empty and looking lonely.  Next time I escape to my studio, I'll be piecing the backing fabric for my Math is Beautiful quilt so I can load it onto my frame and start quilting it.  My APQS new owner class is coming up in two weeks, and I'd like to quilt an actual quilt on my longarm machine before I go.  

The Long-Neglected Math Quilt, Next On My Frame

And of course my sewing time is limited, now that the kids have gone back to school, all their activities are starting up again, church choir rehearsals have resumed.  My design business also tends to ramp up once summer vacations are over, school starts, and clients turn their focus from outdoors back to their interiors, planning projects to refresh their homes for holiday entertaining.

Happy stitching, and happy (almost!) Fall, y'all!  ;-)  Today I'm linking up with:

• ·       Let’s Bee Social at http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/
• ·       Midweek Makers at http://quiltfabrication.com/
• ·       WIPs With Friends at www.mamaspark.blogspot.com 
• WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com
• ·       Finish It Up Friday at www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com
  ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com
  ·       Off the Wall Friday at Creations: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/
  ·       Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

Bobby's Quilt is FINISHED!

Bobby's Quilt, 73" x 96"

Bobby's quilt is FINISHED!  I delivered it to church this morning just in time for it to be blessed by the pastors at their staff meeting.  The Quillow Ceremony will take place this coming Sunday during worship service at Christ Lutheran Church.  All in all, my husband estimates that I spent over 80 hours working on this project, from the initial design to the last stitch. It feels REALLY GOOD that it's finally finished and off my shoulders!

All of the straight line quilting on this quilt was done with a walking foot on my domestic sewing machine.  First I stabilized the quilt by quilting in the ditch with YLI Wonder Invisible monofilament in the needle and Aurifil 50/2 cotton in the bobbin.  That's the discouraging stage where you spend hours putting in quilting stitches that hold everything together and prevent shifting of the layers, and then you look at the quilt and it looks like you haven't started quilting it at all.  Invisible thread in the ditch really IS invisible!

Ditch Stitch Quilting with Walking Foot

Then I switched to a 40 weight YLI variegated machine quilting thread in the needle, Mettler 50/3 cotton in the bobbin, and started quilting the lines of stitching that you actually see.  I used my Bernina #50 three-soled walking foot for both of these quilting stages, with the special ditch sole that rides along the seam allowance for the first part, and then I switched to the open toe sole and attached a guide bar to the foot so I could space the vertical and horizontal lines through the center blocks that form the cross at 1 1/2" from the seam lines, and then another row 1 1/2" in from each of those lines of quilting stitches.  I channel quilted the wide top and bottom borders the same way, echoing the inside corners to make it a little more interesting.  I used my long metal workroom ruler to mark the diagonal lines in all four corners of the quilt. 

I still hate marking quilts; I had to use three different marking utensils (the white marker on the black fabric, the yellow Sewline chalk pencil on the dark gray fabric and the red fabrics, and the purple disappearing pen on the white, gray, and orange fabrics).  The chalk smudges and rubs off while I'm handling the quilt during marking, the white pen starts to run out after I've marked two lines, and the purple pen is a race against time because even though I only marked one quadrant of the quilt at a time and raced right back to the machine to start stitching, the purple pen -- as usual -- had already begun disappearing by the time I was trying to stitch on those lines.  It must be the humidity or something.  I was so tempted to draw the lines with Frixxion pens instead but I didn't have any scraps of the fabrics to test them on and I would have to just lay down and die if the pen marks didn't come out of the quilt after all this work.  So I continued with my purple pen and just swore at it a lot.  That made me feel better.

I had to do more diagonal quilting lines than what I had originally planned.  The batting, Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 cotton/poly, is supposed to be quilted at least 3 1/2" apart.  I didn't want the batting to clump up and cause problems when the quilt is washed, and my stitching lines were farther apart than 3 1/2" at the outside corners.  I went back and added an additional line of quilting stitched between each of the first lines. 

This is where my quilting lines are still too far apart

Of course I had other ideas of decorative quilting that I would have loved to add between the diagonal rays and between the straight stitching lines of the cross, but I'm tried to be REALISTIC and SENSIBLE and KEEP IT SIMPLE since I was racing against time to finish this on time.  Even "simple quilting" took a tremendous amount of time to complete.  Anyway, I really think that the straight lines complement the piecing design and help to give the effect that light is radiating from the center of the cross.

At this point, I'd like to take a moment to credit Amy Friend, whose Ombre Vibes quilt I adapted for this quilt. 

Ombre Vibes by Amy Friend, 54" x 54", photo courtesy Amy Friend

Amy's Ombre Vibes quilt was designed to use the 6 1/2" Square and 6 1/2" Half Square Triangle dies for the Sizzix Die Cutting System, and her pattern is available for free on the Sizzix web site here.  Karen had asked for a quilt design that was Christian themed without being "too obvious" -- she didn't want it to look like a church banner thrown across his bed.  When I saw Amy's quilt on Pinterest, I knew it would be perfect for this project!  I enlarged the blocks to finish at 7 1/2" and added wide borders at the top and bottom of the quilt so it would fit an XL Twin dorm bed.  Karent wanted to incorporate a shield with a cross in the center of the quilt, and she requested red and gray Ohio State colors since that's where Bobby will be going to college in the fall.  The backing fabric is a gray and white camouflage print, a nod to his ROTC service.

Bobby's Quilt, 73" x 96"

Well, now that it's finished, I hope they like it!  I'm linking up with Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts, Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF at Devoted Quilter, and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Minky Loves Monofilament Nylon!

Quilting Is Magic!

I'm finally free-motion quilting, untethered by feed dogs and walking feet!  Hooray!  I quilted "in the ditch" around all of the colored patches on this quilt -- the squares and the turquoise half rectangle triangles -- using my walking foot, constantly turning and stuffing the quilt back under the machine while dreaming of a long arm machine on a frame and thinking about how backwards it is to try to draw anything by moving the PAPER beneath a stationary PENCIL, which is essentially what you are doing when you quilt on a domestic sewing machine.

I used SewArt Invisible Monofilament thread in Smoke with a size 60 Microtex needle and 50/2 Aurifil Mako thread in the bobbin for my ditch quilting, because my ditch quilting never stays 100% in the ditch and I didn't want anyone to notice my oopses.  I reduced my needle tension to 2.0 as usual for sewing with monofilament thread on my Bernina 750 QE sewing machine, and put the monofilament nylon on my regular horizontal thread spindle with no net or anything.  All nice and lovely, beautiful stitches, boring quilting:

Wretched, Boring, Invisible Ditch Quilting with the Walking Foot

Speaking of the walking foot -- on the Bernina 7 Series Yahoo users group, there is often discussion about whether one "needs" a walking foot for quilting on a sewing machine that has integrated Dual Feed like mine does.  There are always some who claim to have great results quilting with their dual feed and no walking foot, but there is NO WAY I could do this kind of quilting without a walking foot.  I was twisting and tugging and stuffing that quilt all over the place, and my Minky backing is hellishly slippery and shifty, and the basting spray was probably not holding things together as securely as my violent ditch quilting continued.  Maybe you can quilt straight lines across a table runner, but I can't imagine risking a large quilt that I've put a lot of hours into.  The walking foot is my friend.  It's just really boring to quilt along all those seam lines, and you don't feel like you're accomplishing anything since the quilting really is invisible unless you mess up!

Once I finished the ditch quilting, I planned to switch to using Aurifil cotton thread in the needle for the background fill quilting, but when I tested it on a sample of my black fabric, batting, and Minky backing I discovered that the cotton thread is "grabbier" than the slick monofilament, and no matter what size needle or tension settings I tried, I kept getting some of the Minky backing pile pulling up through the needle holes to the front side of my quilt. 

Cotton Thread Grabs the Minky Pile and Pulls it to the Front

Yuck!  Those white tufts in the stitches are not batting (I'm using black batting for this piece), they are the pile of the zebra Minky backing fabric.  I am so glad I started out with the monofilament, because I don't know if I would have thought to try it if I was having the problem with the pile pulling through right out of the gate.  Anyway, I'm just going to continue on with the monofilament thread, at least for the black background areas.  The monofilament doesn't pull the Minky through AT ALL.  So, note to self -- MINKY LOVES MONOFILAMENT NYLON THREAD!

By the way, I know it's very fashionable these days to diss the meandering/stippling quilting pattern as overused, but frankly this Scarlet doesn't give a damn.  I can quilt that pattern on autopilot and I think it will look good on my baby quilt and play nicely with the Minky batting.  I am also putting little horns and elf booties in my stippling even though stippling is not supposed to have any points, just to annoy any quilt police out there.  ;-)

That's enough typing for today.  Back to the quilting!

Stipplling Like No One's Watching!

Wrapping Up Loose Edges: Binding the 5th Grade Raffle Quilt Today

Binding In Progress on 5th Grade Raffle Quilt

So, you know that 5th grade class raffle quilt that was due on May 1st?  I got an extension until this Friday, since the fundraiser isn't until May 15th at the school's annual Night of the Arts performances.  Why do I ALWAYS underestimate how long these projects will take?  Especially the Final Stretch steps that come after the quilting is complete: the quilt label, the hanging sleeve, and the binding. 

Embroidered Quilt Label, Created in Bernina Digitizing Software

For instance, I had in mind to do a "quick" embroidered quilt label.  I thought I would use the Auto Digitizing feature in my Bernina Designer Plus embroidery software (I'm using Version 6 since I have not yet upgraded to Version 7) in order to include the school's logo on my label, but unfortunately the image file of the logo that I was working with was not high enough resolution.  So I had to haul out my two-volume software owner's manual (I had a print shop print and spiral bind the online manual) and re-taught myself how to import the logo image into the digitizing software, how to redraw each of the shapes in the logo using left and right mouse clicks, how to adjust things like pull compensation and stitch density for my lightweight Kona cotton fabric, and how to select a nice fill stitch for the gray eagle and satin stitches for the colored shapes.  I adjusted the stitch angle for each of those colored shapes so they radiate outward from the center as well.  Digitizing software is SUPER cool, but it's not as simple as scanning or importing clip art and then hitting an "embroider" button the way you just click "print" to send something to a printer.  You're actually creating a program that tells your embroidery machine's internal computer a sequence of 5,000 or more movements to create your embroidery design one stitch at a time. 

As far as what to include on the quilt label: The students will each be signing their individual blocks with Sakura PIGMA Micron permanent extra fine point marking pens, right on the front of the quilt.  So on the label I put "Created by Ms. Hinkelman's 5th Grade Students" to identify which homeroom class made the quilt, and added "Under the Direction of Ms. Suzanne Tans" because all of the student art work was created in her art class under her supervision, and the concept of bringing the students outside to collect natural objects and then use them in an abstract painting was entirely her idea.  I put "Charlotte, North Carolina 2014" because the Quilt Police and Quilt Historians would definitely come after me if I left off the date or where the quilt was made, and, after hemming and hawing about whether I should put my own name on the quilt at all, I finally decided to include "Machine Quilted by" me. 

Throughout this project, I've tried to keep myself out of it as much as possible so the finished quilt would be all about the students rather than all about Rebecca.  That's why I didn't add any pieced blocks or borders or try to do anything fancy with the quilt construction.  I tried to quilt the blocks in a way that supported and accentuated each child's artwork, but as I look at the finished quilt, my far-from-perfect free-motion quilting skills look like they could have been the work of a child as well, especially considering that most of the people viewing the quilt are not quilters and will have no idea that quilting spirals and squiggles is any more difficult than drawing those motifs with a pen and pencil.  So I put the "quilted by me" disclosure primarily to ensure viewers would not be misled into thinking I taught the entire class how to stitch a quilt from start to finish in 3 weeks -- which would have been a MUCH more impressive feat than what I actually did! 

I decided to incorporate a permanent quilt sleeve because, for one thing, the quilt will need to be hung for display at school on May 15th and 16th for the art auction or raffle or whatever during the Nights of the Arts performances.  Whoever wins the quilt may want to display it in their home on a wall, and having a quilt sleeve pocket for a rod gives them that option without precluding more conventional use of the quilt for snuggling on the couch.  But in order for the quilt sleeve to be attached to the back of the finished quilt with stitches that don't come all the way through to the front, I machine stitched the top of the sleeve to the raw edges at the top of the quilt but had to stitch the bottom edge and sides to the quilt by hand.  Same thing with the quilt label, stitched by hand with an invisible applique stitch in the lower left corner of the quilt, with two edges of the label stitched into the binding. 

Attaching Binding with Walking Foot, Regular Sole

Once the label and sleeve had been hand stitched to the back of the quilt and I'd basted 1/8" from the raw edges with my walking foot, I was FINALLY ready to get started on the binding yesterday.  I cut 2" wide cross grain strips for my binding and I'm stitching them to the quilt with my walking foot.  I switched the sole of the walking foot to this one that has markings indicating 1/4" to the left, right, and in front of the needle, which helps with mitered corners because I don't have to mark or guess where to stop and fold the binding strip back at the corners.  Even though my Bernina 750 QE sewing machine has built in Dual Feed that helps two fabric layers feed more evenly, the walking foot is recommended for best results in situations where you are sewing through three or more layers.  When attaching French fold binding to my quilt, I have the quilt backing, batting, quilt top, plus two layers of binding fabric to stitch through, so that's five layers in all -- it's definitely worth taking 30 seconds to swap out my presser foot and attach the walking foot.

The quilt is still under the machine at the moment with just that first side and corner of the binding stitched on.  But of course, once the binding has been machine stitched to the front of the quilt, it needs to wrap around to the back side and be stitched down by hand all the way around the perimeter of the quilt.  That hand sewing could take me several days, but at least it's PORTABLE -- I can carry the quilt around with me and work on it all day long if I have to. 

Finally, I think I want to wash the quilt before I hand it over to the PTO.  I use glycerin and/or Neutrogena hand lotion on my hands to grip the quilt throughout the quilting process rather than wearing yucky rubber gloves, and I used a lot of starch throughout the construction process to help me straighten the blocks and to get things lining up properly.  I also used water soluble stabilizer when I embroidered the quilt label and wasn't able to remove every little speck of that, but it will dissolve and wash away when I launder the quilt.  I'd like to get all of the dust, grime, starch, stabilizer, and lotion residue washed out of the quilt before I send it off to its permanent home.  I feel like a quilt isn't really, REALLY finished until I pull it out of the clothes dryer and it's all soft, snuggly, and crinkly-textured.

Wish me luck!